Poeta Doctus

In honour of its fiftieth year, The Capilano Review is revisiting past issues and sharing some of their contents. Today, it shared some texts from its Winter 2002 grief / war / poetics issue, but somehow managed to overlook my contribution.

How the editorial team could have committed this oversight is beyond me: to my mind, the poem in question, Seventh Column, excerpted in that issue, is my most accomplished work in terms of its composition, its articulation of its linguistic material.

When the Western powers finally withdrew their forces from Afghanistan recently, I shared the complete poem with some introductory comments. Interested parties can read those comments and the poem, here.